New Home Price Chart

I've added a new chart to the US Home Prices page. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated on a monthly basis by Standard and Poors, using a sophisticated algorithm. Several major markets are tracked and then combined into an overall composite index.

The index, called the CSXR, is scaled with 100 as the value for January 2000. I have taken the index values, multiplied by the gold value of the US Dollar for the month in question, and rescaled the result so that January 2000 again has index value 100.

At the end of 2007, the index stood at 74.3, down from a high of 146 in 2005, and about the same as its level ten years earlier, at the end of 1997. Based solely on the decline of the USD in January and February of 2008, the index should be about 60 at this point, and lower if home prices have fallen, as I expect they have on many of the tracked markets. This looks like an area of strong support from a technical perspective – but will it hold?

Never forget that any value given in dollars is "subject to change at the whim of the management". Keep your eye on true value: price things you care about in gold.